


resolutions

by bibliocratic



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Captivity, Dark, Elias wins, Hurt Some Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, alternative s5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29165868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bibliocratic/pseuds/bibliocratic
Summary: In the throne room of the Panopticon, Martin asks permission to see Jonah's Archivist
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 13
Kudos: 88





	resolutions

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of content warnings in play here - they are detailed in the end notes. Let me know if you would like any tags added
> 
> Deleted and reuploaded to change some things around.

Upon the Sighted throne, Martin’s presence infringes upon Elias’ knowing. From the clusters of eyes that sprout from the ornate seat like berry plants, he watches Martin approach slowly. The man has taught himself not to react to the multitude of pupils that flicker and swivel in his direction, and he stops a suitable distance from the throne itself. Elias is not ready to grant him the honour of his attention, and Martin knows he will have to wait as long as Elias wants him to.

There are no days here, nor time to measure his tempered impatience. Martin waits, as Elias indulgently observes the horror of the world he has reckoned into being, visiting pockets of terror to glut himself on the visions of the wretched there.

“I trust you have a good reason for demanding my attention, Martin.”

A shiver along the stalks of his many eyes is the only warning the other man gets as Elias sinks back into himself and gazes upon his visitor with his human sight. Martin schools his body still, aborting the shaking that has started up in his legs from how long he has stood.

“He’s been up there for too long,” Martin says. His voice is intentionally flat, stripped of demands, all its edges sanded off to quiet. He can be quite biddable when he tries to be, this wayward servant of the Eye **.** “Let him down so he can rest, just for a while.”

Elias studies his tamed prisoner carefully. His posture bowed deferential. Servitude has always been a good look on him for all he chafed and strained at his yoke in the beginning, and he will confess he has enjoyed turning his hand personally to this particular task. It took longer to break him in, longer than it took his treasured Archive, but he learned eventually.

He considers refusing him again, to feel the disappointment crumple in him no matter how much Martin tries to disguise its passing on his face. Elias does so delight in hearing him beg.

“And where are your manners?” he asks instead. Idly, studying his fingernails.

“Please.”

“What was that sorry?” he responds, indulgent and toying. He watches a muscle jump in Martin’s jaw.

He sometimes hopes for the defiance of yesteryear, the frustrating spark of refusal that Elias had spend so long trying to snuff out.

“Please, Elias,” Martin says in his flat, defeated voice. “Let him down.”

“And I suppose you’d beg for some time with him? To fuss and dote and play house?”

Martin doesn’t answer.

Elias sighs as if he is granting a great boon, a tax upon his time and energies. He snaps his fingers, the sound sharper in the hollow throne room, pointing at his feet like he’s summoning a dog to heel.

“You know how to ask.”

It’s a small pity, a frivolous, mildly rankling loss, that such humiliation doesn’t summon a flush to Martin’s cheeks any longer. It was quite a sight, in the early days of Elias’ rule, the man’s pathetic desperation to see his beloved warring with the dregs of his shame.

Martin walks forward to the foot of the throne and goes to his knees without a word.

Elias reaches down to comb his hair from his face, fixing some of the longer strands back. Martin used to flinch, his shoulders high, his mind flickering bonfire bright with all the things he feared Elias might do to him. He tenses now, his gaze directly ahead, and Elias knows that whatever he might choose to do, Martin wouldn’t stop him.

“What will you give me?” Elias murmurs. “To make it worth my while?”

“Whatever you want,” Martin replies. The words learned by rote, a dutiful call-and-response.

“That’s right,” Elias hums pleased. “Whatever I want.”

He moves his hand to Martin’s throat, his fingers splayed in a loose grasp, and uses this grip to raise Martin’s head up, force him to make eye contact.

Martin bites down a gasp as Elias slips easily into his head.

Elias buries him. Has him on his back like he’s coffin-bound, trying to open his eyes only to find them fused shut with the weight of the soil above, the burden of the earth around him like a second skin. Martin sucks in panicked inhales, and he swallows dirt in crumbling chunks, and he gags and coughs to expel it but the greedy earth slides further down his throat. Martin might have learned that it’s better when he doesn’t struggle, but his thrashing body doesn’t know that. Elias waits until he’s twitching with airlessness before the pressure eases, and he is suddenly able to pant thin huffs of air, the oxygen deprivation making him woozy and spiked with delirium, and Elias knows just when to retract this respite and let the earth choke him again. This goes on for some time. Sometimes, feeling fanciful, adherent to fickle whims, he allows Martin to see a poky patch of light, permits him to worm and writhe, his skin rubbed raw with the friction, his muscles burning and his impacted nails ruined, moving inch by inch exhausted and degraded to potential freedom before the earth gulps him back down again, shrieking and screaming in muffled terror.

Elias allows his torment to continue until Martin’s convinced he’ll die here, that no one will save him, that he’ll be abandoned in the dark and the crush. It takes a long time; Martin is ever such a hopeful soul.

His pitiful mewling fear makes for such delicious entertainment, a gourmet delicacy for the Eye.

Elias withdraws, feeling full and sated, his attention already drifting away. His eyes observe the trembling wretch at his feet, gasping and coughing, as his addled mind comes back to itself, recalls that there is more than the clutch and the cold.

“What do we say?” Elias asks.

Martin’s too drained, too shattered to hate him. Attempting to rise to his knees from where his body dropped against the hard marble of the floor.

“Thank you,” he croaks out.

Elias is feeling merciful today. A magnanimous ruler of his nightmare kingdom.

“I’ve let him down.” He waves a dismissive hand. “Go.”

Martin does not need telling twice.  
  


* * *

  
Elias leaves them alone, as much as they ever are at least.

Cut down from his moorings at the centre of the Panopticon that marks the focal point of the Eye’s gaze, the eyes that scar Jon’s body flex and roll back into his skin. Martin lifts him and carries him the short distance to their sparse quarters as he returns to himself, his endless recitation of horrors quietening into a burble, like the drying up of a river. Martin settles him on the bed, gets a damp cloth to wipe away the sweat that’s sprung onto his face.

“Hey,” he says encouragingly. His voice is dry from screaming. “Hey, you with me?”

Jon looks up. Blinks slowly. Frowns. His mouth moves without sound. This goes on for some time, and Martin had known it would.

Eventually the tight line of his body relaxes. His frown loosening into a wincing confusion.

“Martin?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Martin says, and he can’t keep the relief back. “It’s me.”

Jon’s hand flops around on the bedcovers, searching before Martin grasps it. After so long in the dirt, the warmth of skin shocks him. The grip faint before rousing to anchor their palms together.

Jon squints at him.

“Your hair’s longer.”

“You’ve been up there a while. Every time I asked he said no.”

Jon’s hand reaches up to cradle Martin’s face.

“What did he do to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Martin…”

“Please. Jon, please. Don’t.”

Jon stores his questions back into silence. He strokes away the faint tear marks he finds under Martin’s eyes, the only evidence of the price paid for these moments together.

“I’d kill him, if I could,” Jon says. Martin nods and replies ‘I know’ as if that were at all possible. If we kill him. If we escape.

They’ve tried. Elias would have disposed of him without a second thought when they first came here, if Jon hadn’t pleaded for his deliverance. But Martin’s continued existence is no kindness, nor a testament to Elias’ benevolence; rather, he is a perfectly made shackle, a stick to beat an unwilling Archivist with. The last time they tried to escape, Elias made Jon watch Martin’s punishment, a hand-crafted nightmare borrowed from the Desolation. All his eyes forced open, feeding on Martin’s agony even as he begged Elias to stop. Jon had stopped talking about escape after that. In a small section of Martin’s mind that he hopes Elias has overlooked, Martin thinks of nothing but.

There isn’t a lot to say to each other. Jon shivers and quakes with the aftershocks of Seeing, the last vestiges of his humanity brutalized into the service of the Eye. Martin’s mouth tastes of dirt, and his skin crawls where he is hemmed in, but he makes himself push through that discomfort, to lie down next to Jon and hold his body against his own like mooring two sea-shattered pieces of driftwood.

Martin kisses his temple. His cheek. Makes his words whisper against skin, as if they are lover’s recollections should Elias be watching.

“Jon?”

“Hm?”

“Do you remember when I was working with Peter? And you offered me something, and I didn’t take it?”

Jon stiffens. His hand in Martin’s clenches, any hope he might have felt poisoned with such reasonable terror.

“If I made you the same offer,” Martin continues into the hollow of his throat. “Knowing what would happen to you now. What would you say?”

“The same choice?”

“Exactly the same.”

Jon’s grip is bruising.

“You think there’s a way?”

“I know there is. I found something.”

Jon turns over so they are face to face.

“What about you?” comes the whisper.

If Martin succeeds, there will be no forgiveness. If Elias loses his Archive, there will be rage, pitiless and unending, the unendurable that he will be made to endure and an endless world within which to suffer it.

“Like you offered,” Martin promises. “Together.”

Carefully, he moves his hand to cover Jon’s eyes, a gentle blindfold. Without breaking eye contact, he takes Jon’s fingers, and brings them up so they run a line across Martin’s throat.

“Do you understand me?” Martin asks.

His limbs tremble more often than not nowadays, but Jon mimics Martin’s gestures – his hand held flat over his own sight, before tracing a shivering line across Martin’s neck.

“Yes,” Jon whispers.

“Even if it hurts? Even if it doesn’t work?”

“Yes,” Jon repeats. His eyes wet, the light in them calmer and clearer than Martin has seen in a long time. “Together.” He buries his face into Martin’s chest, bringing his arms around form them into one tangled mass. “I love you. I love you and I wish I could have given you better than this.”

“I love you,” Martin replies. “Just a bit longer, yeah? Just a bit longer.”

Jon leans in and presses their lips together. And Martin knows when the time comes Jon will look at him as kindly, with such compassion as Martin releases him from the Eye, and the thought almost rocks him to tears.

“Just a bit longer,” Jon confirms, and Martin folds into the embrace and prays they can both last till then.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings
> 
> • Humiliation   
> • Imprisonment / captivity   
> • Non-con touching  
> • Asphyxiation  
> • Being buried alive  
> • Non-graphic depictions of violence  
> • Implied torture  
> • Strongly implied suicidal ideation


End file.
